Benefits of 5-A-Day Fruits in Our Daily Diet

The Mediterranean diet has long been considered to be the optimum diet for the human heart given it includes plenty of fresh fruit. WHO guidelines recommend that each of us should aim to eat at least five portions of different fruit or vegetables on a daily basis. A portion of fruit constitutes a single fruit such as an Apple, a small cup of fruit such as grapes or raspberries, or a glass of pure fruit juice. It is okay to include dried, tinned and frozen fruit as part of your five a day but be careful with tinned fruits given they are frequently sweetened with syrups and in many cases contains less vitamin C. Wherever possible purchase fruit that has been canned in its own juices without the addition of extra sugars.

Fruit itself is an excellent source of antioxidants examples which are bioflavonoid and vitamin C all helping to protect us against degenerative diseases, heart disease and cancer are good examples. Fruit is also low in calories and is therefore an exceptional foodstuff for anybody attempting to lose weight.

Fresh fruit and fruit juices provide most of our regular intake of vitamins C, with citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons and tangerines being the most important sources. Other providers of vitamins C in our diets include kiwifruit, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, mangoes and papayas. Fruits with a deep yellow or orange flash good examples are apricots, mangoes and cantaloupe melons, obtain their colour from an yellow orange pigment known as beta carotene, otherwise known as the plant form of vitamin A.

This, it is understood, helps to protect us against free radicals and some have suggested even cancer. The majority of fruits are also rich in potassium which is especially true of bananas and dried fruits. Potassium works to regulate our blood pressures and it also works in tandem with sodium to regulate the body's fluid balance. Other reasons why fruit is so valuable in our diets is because it contains both soluble and insoluble fibres. Insoluble fibres help to prevent constipation and are also connected with a reduced risk of colon cancer whereas soluble fibres have been shown to help lower blood cholesterol levels.

Citrus fruits and indeed dried fruits such as dates, figs, raisins and apricots are also particularly good sources of fibre in our diets. There are many benefits to including the proportions of fruit in your diet including vitamins C, antioxidants and potassium with the only notable drawback is that fruit juices can contribute towards tooth decay. That said, this is a small price to pay for a healthy body utilising a balanced diet of fruit.

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Using Fruit in Dessert Recipes

Fruit is a popular ingredient to use when making desserts because it is naturally sweet. It is also colorful, nutritious and you can eat it cooked or raw, making it a versatile ingredient.

There are many different ways to use fruit to make dessert recipes. You can serve a simple fruit platter, a fruit and cheese platter, fruit pies, fruit cobblers, fruit jello recipes and much more. You can use fresh fruit, frozen fruit, or canned fruit.

Healthy Recipes with Fruit

Fruit contains natural sugar but is very nutritious and a great source of energy too. If you want low calorie recipes or low fat recipes using fruit, what about making some sugar free jello and adding fruit slices before the jello sets?

If you are using canned fruit, you might want to rinse the sugar syrup off it before using it in a fruit recipe. Frozen berries and other frozen fruit should be defrosted before you use it, unless the recipe says otherwise, because it is covered in ice crystals and will be very watery when it thaws, diluting your dessert perhaps too much.

Unusual Fruit Recipes

Nearly everyone has enjoyed a fruit platter or a fruit jello recipe but have you ever tried deep fried ice cream with blackberry coulis or a fruit pizza recipe? Recipes like these bring the fun factor back into cooking with fruit.

Wrap a cube of vanilla ice cream in a thin pancake and deep fry it, then serve it with a blackberry coulis for a delicious gourmet dessert.

Alternatively, what about topping a pizza crust with chocolate sauce, marshmallows, and slices of your favorite fruit? This delicious dessert combines indulgence with nutrition for a guilt-free dessert experience and you do not even have to bake it.

Easy Baked Pear and Pecan Pie

The following recipe is simple to prepare and serves six to eight people. Pears go wonderfully with spices like cinnamon and nutmeg and the pecans add a wonderful crunch. If you have apples to use up instead of pears, use those instead.

You will need:

2 1/2 cups peeled fresh pear slices
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup plus 1 teaspoon white sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 lightly beaten egg
3/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon melted butter

How to make it:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 inch pie pan with 1 teaspoon of butter and arrange the pear slices in the pan. Dust them with 1 teaspoon of sugar, the cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg. Mix the rest of the sugar with the rest of the butter in a medium bowl. Add the flour, egg, pecans, and salt and spread this mixture over the pears. Bake for an hour or until the pie is golden brown on top. Serve hot or chilled in slices, with cream or ice cream.

There are plenty of delicious types of pizza and healthy recipes you can make with fruit. If you fancy something delicious like a fruit pizza recipe, check out our site where you will find all the best savory pizzas as well as sweet, fruity ones for when you want to satisfy your sweet tooth with something delicious and nutritious.

GreatPizzaRecipes.com You Make the Pizza, We Help You Make It Great!

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7 Tips For Making Delicious Fruit Salad

Fruit salad makes for a great dessert as well as a healthy snack. We have a bowl of it sitting in the fridge most days. Having it there makes it easy for everyone in my family to grab a healthy snack and I much rather they eat a bowl of this than some cookies or candy bars. Here are some simple tips to make sure your fruit salad turns out perfect every time you make it.

Keep It Simple - Don't try to get too fancy with your fruit salad. You really want the individual pieces of fruit to shine. Stick to no more than five different types of fruit and keep the dressing simple as well. More on that in just a second or two...

Use Fruit In Season - When you are picking the fruits to use in your salad, stick with the ones that are in season and pick pieces that look fresh and tasty. The only exception would be if you use dried or canned fruit. They can make yummy accents to your fruit salad, but the bulk of the fruit you use should be fresh. In other words, feel free to sprinkle a few raisins or some chunks of canned pineapple in your salad, but keep the rest of the fruit fresh for best results.

Don't Overdress It - Let's get back to the issue of dressing. A fruit salad dressing should be simple, light and slightly sweet to enhance the natural sweetness of the fruit. You don't won't it to overpower the fruit though. I like to mix a little lemon juice and either sugar or honey. The lemon juice gives a nice tartness, but more importantly it will keep the fruit from turning brown. The sugar or honey will balance out the tartness of the lemon while drawing natural juices out of the fruit. If needed, you can add a splash of water or fruit juice to stretch the dressing. In the summer, you may want to add a little chopped mint to the dressing as well.

Be Colorful - Your fruit salad should look as good as it tastes. A simple way to accomplish just that is to choose fruits in a wide variety of colors. A salad bursting with colors will also be bursting with flavor. Just imagine mixing some red apples, purple grapes, green pears, yellow or pail white melon and orange slices. A great way to make sure your fruit salad is colorful is to leave the skin the fruit whenever possible and of course only when the skin is edible. This will also give your fruit salad some nice texture.

Skip The Berries - For the most part, stay away from berries for your fruit salad. They quickly disintegrate and make a big mess of the rest of your salad. The only time I use berries is if I know we will eat all of it right away. Even then I usually try to keep the berries whole, with the exception of strawberries which can be sliced without ruining your salad right away.

Don't Overchill - While it's perfectly fine to store fruit salad leftovers in the fridge, you want to make sure you don't chill it too much before you serve it. The fruit will develop its full flavor potential at room temperature. In the summer time, it's fine to serve the salad slightly chilled. Even if you store it in the fridge, be sure to take it out at least 30 minutes prior to serving it.

Make It Fresh - Fruit salad isn't a dish that you can easily make ahead of time. Make it fresh and don't be tempted to cut the fruit ahead of time. It will quickly lose a lot of its flavor. A perfect fruit salad is made right before you eat it. This way every single bite will be bursting with flavor and vitamins.

And now I would like to invite you to give yet another type of fruit salad a try. The heavier dressing and simple ingredients make the waldorf salad a perfect dessert that defies a lot of the tips I shared with you in this article.

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Amazing Fruit Benefits

Fruit benefits have been known for years, but many people do not apply this to their daily diet. Eating fruits may have many other benefits that you do not know about. If you plan fruit in your diet everyday and stick to this plan, you may see a variety of results that you never expected before.

There are many vitamins in fruits and you may want to begin to research all of these amazing vitamins and see how they can benefit you. You can also check with your doctor and find out if there are any vitamins or minerals where you are deficient and you can begin to incorporate these types of fruits into your diet. You may be amazed at what you discover when you do some research and you might want to take notes so that you do not forget anything that you deem important.

Fruit benefits may also help you lose weight and this is a major perk for many people. If you take simple steps of incorporating fruit into your diet each day, you may find that fruit has a very filling effect on the body and this can help you feel full longer and in turn you will be losing weight.

Fruit benefits also include boosting your energy level. You may find that there are periods throughout the day when you start to fee sluggish and fruit may help you with a great energy boost. You should experiment a little and find out which fruits can give you the most energy. Fruit benefits may also make you feel better. When you are giving your body what it wants, it will perform better and this can help you feel better. You may find that you are sick less often and that you just feel better overall.

Fruit benefits can also be found in vitamins and supplements. If you find it hard to consume the amount of fruit you need on daily basis a supplement can be a great way to get all of the important vitamins that you need without having to consume a large amount of fruit. This is also a very easy way to get what you need in one simple tablet or chewable.

Fruit benefits are massive and you will discover why fruit is so important in your diet when you start doing your own investigative research. A fruit supplement or vitamin is a great alternative and you do not have to eat entirely healthy to have fruit benefits.

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Do You Suffer From Gas, Bloating, Indigestion Or Flatulence After You Eat Fruits? Here is Why

Are you one of those people who say "I love fruits, but it does not love me?"  Or "I love fruits, but I just can't eat it". a lot of people think that they are allergic to fruits because of the gas, bloating, and flatulence they experience after eating fruits.  However, is this really an allergy to fruits or is it something else?

 Most people I meet love fruits, both young and old we all love fruits.  The reason why we instinctively crave fruits is because it is the one who by the human body is perfectly, biologically adopted to.  Most fresh fruits are extremely high in water content with some fruits having up to 90% cleansing, life-giving, and new trade Pack water.  This water is perfect for cleansing and ridding the body of dangerous toxic waste matter.  Roots contains all the vitamins, minerals, carbohydrates, amino acids, fatty  Acids that the body requires each day

The body uses more energy indigestion than for any other process vital energy is redirected from other processes that the body must perform in order to digest our food.  Fruits on the other hand requires less energy to digest than any other food group.

Fruits are not digested in the stomach, all fruits, with the exception of bananas, dates, and dried fruit, stays in the stomach only for a very short time.  This is very important to remember because if fruits are not intended to stay in the stomach for very long, incorrect consumption means that fruits should never be the immediately before or immediately after anything else.  It is vital that when you eat fruits is eaten on them to stomach.  Let's just say you had a medium-size lunch burgers and fries, and then you eat a fruit salad. 

The fruits are ready to go straight to the summa into the contest aims but it is being prevented by the burger you ate just before.  In the meantime the entire meal that is the burgers, fries and the fruit salad stays in your stock and for many this.  The very action of fermentation produces gas, and lots of it.  This is the main reason why most people think they are allergic to fruits.

So you at the fruit salad immediately after you at your lunch, you get gas, our ability, or indigestion, or flatulence, and you blame it on the fruits.  If the fruits were eaten first in about 30 minutes were allowed to pass before eating your meal the fruits would have left to stumble and moved on to the intestinal tract and no problem would've resulted.

So if you have been constantly blaming fruits for your gastric disturbances, try eating fruits at least 30 minutes before consuming your meal, or wait at least two hours after you have consumed your meal.  The point is to eat fruits once your stomach is empty.  This way you would enjoy all the benefits of fruits and at the same time prevent any discomfort that you may have had in the past.

The intestines are where all the nutrients are absorbed, because fruits reached in testing this within minutes of eating, it's nutrients are immediately absorbed and euthanized by the body.  By eating only fruits in the morning between 7 and 12 PM you will make your entire day more productive and you will have more energy.

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How to Make Fruit Leather

Fruit leathers or fruit roll ups are homemade fruit rolls. Fruit leathers are made from pureed fruit that is dried on a flat surface. After the fruit is dry, it is pulled from the drying surface and rolled into small tubes. Fruit roll ups get their name from the look and texture of the dried, pureed fruit which is shiny and leathery.

Homemade fruit roll ups are a great tasty, nutritious snack that children especially love. Homemade fruit leather can be made from many different fruit combinations and spices and are substantially less expensive and more wholesome than the store bought kind. Store bought fruit roll ups are really over processed candy and contain heavy sugars or corn syrup and are partially made from fruit juice. Thus, store bought fruit roll ups are not one hundred percent fruit.

Making roll ups requires the following utensils:

Knives,
a double boiler or steamer (optional),
a food processor or blender, or alternatively strong arms and forearms for mashing and blending
and plastic wrap or non-stick dehydrator sheets

Fruit Leather steps:

Use ripe or slightly overripe fruit
Wash, remove stems and seeds, remove peels (some peel can be left on oranges, lemons, limes and other similar food)
Cut the food into slices or chunks
Steam it for 10-15 minutes (optional)
Puree it in a blender or food processor
Add juice or spices as flavoring (pineapple, lemon, lime), if desired add sugar or honey as a sweetener, and or add chopped nuts or coconut to create different textures
To prevent food discoloration and flavor loss, add 1/2 teaspoon of ascorbic acid crystals or 2 tablespoons of lemon juice for every 2 cups of fruit.
Lightly coat the food dehydrator plastic sheets or wrap with a cooking spray
Pour the puree to create an even depth of 1/8 to 1/4 inch
Maintain a food dehydrator temperature of 115 to 130 degrees Fahrenheit, or 46 to 54 degrees Celsius, and dry for up to 10 hours. The fruit leather is ready if it peels readily at the edges and if you cannot see any indentations after you touch it in several places.
Roll your strips of fruit leather and wrap them in plastic wrap. Fruit leather can be stored for a year in the freezer, several months in the refrigerator and a month or two at room temperature.

Fruit leather can also be made via an uncooked method. After slicing the fruit into chunks (step 3), skip step 4 (steaming) and proceed to step 5 and puree the fruit.Other tips:

Fruits suitable for fruit leather include apples, apricots, bananas, berries, cherries, grapes, oranges, pears, pineapples, plums, strawberries, tangerines, and tomatoes
Draining excess juice from the fruit will speed up the drying time
Applesauce can be dried alone or added to any fresh puree. Applesauce will add sweetness and make the fruit leather smoother and more pliable.
Spices to add: Sparingly use cinnamon, cloves, coriander, ginger, mace, mint, nutmeg or pumpkin pie spice

Visit Food Dehydrator to learn how to dehydrate food and make beef jerky and dried fruit. Use our food dehydrator content and calculators to discover the benefits of food dehydrators and dried food.

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Does New Fruit2day Rival Fresh Fruit?

Back in May of this year, a new product was released in the US by the international company Hero/WhiteWave. Called Fruit2day, this fruit drink is intended to help busy people everywhere increase their consumption of fruit.

What is Fruit2day?

Here is the introduction on the Fruit2day website:

No doubt about it, fruit does wonders for your health.

Can't argue with that one. Let's keep going:

But it's tough to get your fill with an on-the-go lifestyle.

Hmm. Apparently whoever wrote this has never heard of bananas.

Now there's a new way to eat fruit.

As opposed to chewing and swallowing, I suppose.

It's not that we changed fruit. We just discovered that dicing-up real fruit into little bits and adding them to rich blends of all-natural juice and puree tastes really, really good.

Yes, we know. It's called a smoothie. Or, if you want to get all fancy on me, a fruit soup.

So drink it, sip it, chew it and enjoy two servings of fruit like you never have before.

Oh boy...I can't wait... :roll:

Alright...Enough With The Sarcasm

The stuff can't really be all that bad. I mean it is real fruit, right? And, as the label says, "No added sugars." And I'm all for increasing consumer awareness and encouraging people to eat more fruit. But does Fruit2day really rival the nutrient quality, taste, cost, or portability of fresh fruit?

Juicing

If you take a look at what's actually in any one of the four Fruit2day flavors, you will notice that the majority of the ingredients are fruit juices.

Here's the ingredient list for Strawberry Orange:

strawberry pieces
apple juice from concentrate
white grape juice from concentrate
orange juice with pulp from concentrate
banana puree
pineapple pieces and puree
aronia berry juice from concentrate
acerola cherry juice from concentrate
natural flavor

9 ingredients, 5 of which are juices.

The problem with juicing fruit is that vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals are lost in the process. This includes vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium, and fiber. And why do we need fiber? Quite simply:

Because of fiber, and because precious food components haven't been lost through processing, natural plant foods fill you up and do not cause abnormal physiological cravings or hormonal imbalances.

Eating fruits and vegetables with the fiber intact also slows down the rate of glucose absorption, which will prevent blood sugar spikes.

SIDE NOTE: The above quote is from Eat To Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman. Even though it's advertised as a diet book, Eat To Live is actually more of a collection of scientific studies pointing to the positive effects of eating a diet devoid of animal products. And while Dr. Fuhrman does advocate eating cooked grains, legumes, and veggies, he also encourages unlimited amounts of raw fruit and vegetables in the diet.

Pasteurization

In order for Fruit2day to have any sort of a shelf life without preservatives, the majority of the ingredients must be pasteurized. So, all of the fruit juices are heat-treated. And as we already know, heat = nutrient loss.

From Concentrate

And speaking of nutrient loss, what about the fact that the fruit juices included are from concentrate? A juice "not from concentrate" is first squeezed, then pasteurized, and finally packaged. A juice "from concentrate" has an extra step. The water is removed from the juice and then added back in before pasteurization and packaging. More steps, more oxidization, more nutrient loss, AND an overall cheaper quality product

Natural Flavor?

All four flavors have "natural flavor" listed last on the ingredient list. While I'm sure this is something relatively innocent, it would still be nice to know what exactly this flavoring is. I better be careful...my "raw foodist" is showing.

Cost

The price of 2 bottles (4 servings worth) of Fruit2day is $3.75. That's about $.94 per one half cup of fruit. I've bought organic bananas for $.65 per pound, local cantaloupe for $1.50 per pound, organic Valencia oranges for $1.15 per pound... I've even purchased locally grown, pesticide-free, absolutely delicious peaches for $.75 per pound. Need I say more?

Portability

As mentioned above, the big selling point here is that Fruit2day is extremely portable. You just grab a bottle and go! But I ask you, can you not just grab a banana and go, or grab an apple and go, or grab an orange and go? Heck, even melon is pretty portable! Just cut one up in advance, store in pre-portioned plastic containers in the fridge, and carry it along with you.

Taste

I haven't actually tasted this stuff myself. I just can't bring myself to spend almost $4 on four measly servings of fruit. And heat-treated fruit juice isn't exactly raw, now is it?

The Final Verdict

Fruit2day just doesn't measure up. Sure, it's fruit. But it isn't whole, nor is it fresh or even raw. And as far as Fruit2day's ability to convince the masses to eat more fruit, I am skeptical. I'm not a penny pincher, but I just can't see the average Joe Shmoe shelling out $3.75 for two small bottles of chunky fruit smoothie. Not when you can get a Milky Way bar for under 2 bucks.

But what do you think? Is Fruit2day a worthy competitor of fresh fruit or merely the sad remains of its nutrient-packed opponent?

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